Dave Smith

i was fortunate to catch four-fifths of last week’s Electric Spring festival, Huddersfield University’s annual exploration and celebration of things electronically musical. As usual, attention was focused on a daily evening concert, featuring a substantial programme preceded by one or more relatively brief opening acts. The festival’s emphasis on electronic music felt conspicuously different this year; the connection seemed pretty tenuous in Thursday’s concert showcasing three films (admittedly all including electronically-created or -processed music to some extent, and the event was a tie-in for the university’s Sound and Music in Documentary Film symposium, which was taking place at the same time), as well as drummer Dave Smith’s Saturday gig, which employed little in the way of electronics beyond a few loops, some reverb and a modicum of pitch-shifting. i mention this more as an observation than a complaint: the concerts were no less enjoyable for their relatively minor use of electronics, but it’s fair to say that these two events, in retrospect, seemed more like vanity projects for the particular members of staff who organised them than deeply meaningful contributions to Electric Spring’s general ethos. Or maybe Electric Spring is going somewhere else in future; i guess we’ll see. Read more

A couple of electronic music announcements. First, if you’ll forgive the self-pluggery, i’m pleased to announce that the third volume of my ongoing series of Studies is now available. (Many thanks to all of you who have purchased volumes 1 and 2.) The Studies explore my interest in structuring sound materials from an initially visual perspective, an approach i describe as ‘Op music’, a sonic equivalent of Op art. The three studies on Vol. 3 are highly diverse. No. 12 is an exploration of near parallel pitch movement, resulting in shepard tone-like sequences and a shifting, paradoxical sense of stasis and movement. No. 13 examines the juxtaposition of freely-evolving sounds within an imposed metric system, positioning quasi-random clouds of pitch within an grid-like arrangement. Vol. 3 ends with my longest study to date, No. 10. Its 14-minute duration begins with a vast number of tightly packed pitch bands, moving as one; over time, these gradually drift out of alignment, resulting in complex waves and patterns of harmonic distribution and introducing elements of implied melody. The work is complicated further by a central episode, the noise of which permeates this process and threatens to disrupt it from within.

Second, more importantly, Huddersfield University’s annual Electric Spring festival kicks off this Wednesday, running until Sunday. Once again it features a typically diverse collection of composers, many of whom are happily new to me. Alex McLean and Dave Smith will be performing improvisations, Mark Lyken & Emma Doveare presenting their film Mirror Lands, Argentine composer Beatriz Ferreyra (well-known particularly for her work composed as part of Pierre Schaeffer’s Groupe de Recherches Musicales) is represented in three electronic works including her brand new 16-channel work Los senderos de luz y sombras, premièred last month in Paris, and Richard Scott will bring the festival to an end with a suite of analogue synth pieces. These concerts are supplemented with opening acts from Tadej Droljc, Demelza Kooij & Lars Koens, Geoff Cox & Keith Marley, Frédéric Dufeu, Solomiya Moroz & Marko Ivic and Elías Merino. Each concert

All are preceded by pre-concert talks, and there’s a keynote talk from filmmaker Andrew Kötting. There are two additional late night concerts on Friday and Saturday nights, and throughout the festival there’s an interactive installation by Stewart Worthy called Speaker Grid situated in the Creative Arts Building’s large atrium. Everything is free – everything – so it’s a fabulous opportunity for some really new sonic experiences. i’ll be there for the duration, and will be reviewing as much as i can. Full details are available on the Electric Spring website, where you can also download the festival programme.